Chronology

The start of the war is generally held to be September 1, 1939 beginning with the German invasion of Poland; Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. Other dates for the beginning of war include the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on September 13, 1931;[6] the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on July 7, 1937;[7][8] or one of several other events.

Others follow A. J. P. Taylor, who held that there was a simultaneous Sino-Japanese War in East Asia, and a Second European War in Europe and her colonies. The two wars merged in 1941, becoming a single global conflict, at which point the war continued until 1945. This article uses the conventional dating.[9]

The exact date of the war's end is not universally agreed upon. It has been suggested that the war ended at the armistice of August 14, 1945 (V-J Day), rather than the formal surrender of Japan (September 2, 1945); in some European histories, it ended on V-E Day (May 8, 1945). The Treaty of Peace with Japan was not signed until 1951.[10]

Background

World War I radically altered the diplomatic and political situations in Eurasia and Africa with the defeat of the Central Powers, including Austria-Hungary, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire; and the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia in 1917. Meanwhile the success of the Allied Entente powers including the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Italy, Yugoslavia, and Romania and the creation of new states from the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire resulted in a major shift in the balance of power in Europe.[citation needed] In the aftermath of the war major unrest in Europe rose, especially irredentist and revanchist nationalism and class conflict. Irredentism and revanchism was strong in Germany which was forced to accept significant territorial, colonial, and financial losses as part of the Treaty of Versailles. Under the treaty Germany lost around 13 percent of its home territory and all of its overseas colonies, while German annexation of other states was prohibited, massive reparations were imposed and limits were placed on the size and capability of Germany's armed forces.[11] Meanwhile, the Russian Civil War had led to the creation of the Soviet Union. After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin seized power in the USSR and repudiated the New Economic Policy favouring the Five Year Plans instead.[12]

In the interwar period, domestic civil conflict occurred in Germany involving nationalists and reactionaries versus communists and moderate democratic political parties. A similar scenario occurred in Italy. Although Italy as an Entente ally made some territorial gains, Italian nationalists were angered that the terms of the Treaty of London upon which Italy had agreed to wage war on the Central Powers, were not fulfilled with the peace settlement. From 1922 to 1925, the Italian Fascist movement led by Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy with a nationalist, totalitarian, and class collaborationist agenda that abolished representative democracy, repressed political forces supporting class conflict or liberalism, and pursued an aggressive foreign policy aimed at forcefully forging Italy as a world power, and promising to create a "New Roman Empire."[13]Fascism became internationally popular amongst people disillusioned with democratic government, liberalism, and class conflict.[citation needed] In Germany, the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler pursued establishing such a fascist government in Germany. With the onset of the Great Depression, Nazi support rose and in 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, and in the aftermath of the Reichstag fire, Hitler created a totalitarian single-party state led by the Nazis.[14]

Hitler defied the Versailles and Locarno treaties by remilitarizing the Rhineland in March 1936. He received little response from other European powers.[25] When the Spanish Civil War broke out in July, Hitler and Mussolini supported fascist Generalissimo Francisco Franco's nationalist forces in his civil war against the Soviet-supported Spanish Republic. Both sides used the conflict to test new weapons and methods of warfare,[26] and the nationalists won the war in early 1939. Mounting tensions led to several efforts to strengthen or consolidate power. In October 1936, Germany and Italy formed the Rome-Berlin Axis. A month later, Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, which Italy would join in the following year. In China, after the Xian Incident the Kuomintang and communist forces agreed on a ceasefire in order to present a united front to oppose Japan.[27]

Pre-war events

Invasion of Ethiopia

The Second Italo–Abyssinian War was a brief colonial war that started in October 1935 and ended in May 1936. The war was fought between the armed forces of the Kingdom of Italy (Regno d'Italia) and the armed forces of the Ethiopian Empire (also known as Abyssinia). The war resulted in the military occupation of Ethiopia and its annexation into the newly created colony of Italian East Africa (Africa Orientale Italiana, or AOI); in addition, it exposed the weakness of the League of Nations as a force to preserve peace. Both Italy and Ethiopia were member nations, but the League did nothing when the former clearly violated the League's own Article X.[28]

In June 1938, Chinese forces stalled the Japanese advance by flooding the Yellow River; although this manoeuvre bought time for the Chinese to prepare their defences at Wuhan, the city was taken by October.[30] However, Japanese military victories did not bring about the collapse of Chinese resistance that Japan had hoped to achieve, instead the Chinese government relocated to Chongqing to continue their resistance.[31]

Japanese invasion of the USSR and Mongolia

On July 29, 1938, the Japanese invaded the USSR and were checked at the Battle of Lake Khasan. Although the battle was a Soviet victory, the Japanese dismissed it as an inconclusive draw, and on May 11, 1939 decided to move the Japanese-Mongolian border up to the Khalkin Gol River by force. Stalin replaced the former Soviet commander with Georgy Zhukov on Semyon Timoshenko's advice. Zhukov, along with reinforcements sent from Moscow, checked the Japanese assault on Mongolia and handed the Japanese Kwangtung Army their first major defeat.[32][33]

These clashes convinced the Japanese government that they should focus on conciliating the Soviet government to avoid interference in the war against China and instead turn their military attention southward, towards the US and European holdings in the Pacific. They also prevented the sacking of experienced Soviet military leaders such as Zhukov, who would later play a vital role in the defence of Moscow.[34]

Throughout this period, the neutral United States took measures to assist China and the Western Allies. In November 1939, the American Neutrality Act was amended to allow 'Cash and carry' purchases by the Allies.[66] In 1940, following the German capture of Paris, the size of the United States Navy was significantly increased and, after the Japanese incursion into Indochina, the United States embargoed iron, steel and mechanical parts against Japan.[67] In September, the United States further agreed to a trade of American destroyers for British bases.[68] Still, a large majority of the American public continued to oppose any direct military intervention into the conflict well into 1941.[69]

At the end of September 1940, the Tripartite Pact united Japan, Italy, and Germany to formalize the Axis Powers.[70] The Tripartite Pact stipulated that any country, with the exception of the Soviet Union, not in the war which attacked any Axis Power would be forced to go to war against all three.[71] During this time, the United States continued to support the United Kingdom and China by introducing the Lend-Lease policy authorizing the provision of war materiel and other items[72] and creating a security zone spanning roughly half of the Atlantic Ocean where the United States Navy protected British convoys.[73] As a result, Germany and the United States found themselves engaged in sustained naval warfare in the North and Central Atlantic by October 1941, even though the United States remained officially neutral.[74][75]

In Asia, despite several offensives by both sides, the war between China and Japan was stalemated by 1940. In order to increase pressure on China by blocking supply routes, and to better position Japanese forces in the event of a war with the Western powers, Japan had seized military control of southern Indochina[90] In August of that year, Chinese communists launched an offensive in Central China; in retaliation, Japan instituted harsh measures (the Three Alls Policy) in occupied areas to reduce human and material resources for the communists.[91] Continued antipathy between Chinese communist and nationalist forces culminated in armed clashes in January 1941, effectively ending their co-operation.[92] With the situation in Europe and Asia relatively stable, Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union made preparations. With the Soviets wary of mounting tensions with Germany and the Japanese planning to take advantage of the European War by seizing resource-rich European possessions in Southeast Asia, the two powers signed the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact in April 1941.[93] By contrast, the Germans were steadily making preparations for an attack on the Soviet Union, amassing forces on the Soviet border.[94]

The war becomes global

A German soldier inspecting the remains of destroyed Soviet forces in the Białystok–Minsk pocket.

By October, when Axis operational objectives in Ukraine and the Baltic region were achieved, with only the sieges of Leningrad[108] and Sevastopol continuing,[109] a major offensive against Moscow had been renewed. After two months of fierce battles, the German army almost reached the outer suburbs of Moscow, where the exhausted troops[110] were forced to suspend their offensive.[111] Large territorial gains were made by Axis forces, but their campaign had failed to achieve its main objectives: two key cities remained in Soviet hands, the Soviet capability to resist was not broken, and the Soviet Union retained a considerable part of its military potential. The blitzkriegphase of the war in Europe had ended.[112]

By early December, freshly mobilised reserves[113] allowed the Soviets to achieve numerical parity with Axis troops.[114] This, as well as intelligence data that established a minimal number of Soviet troops in the East sufficient to prevent any attack by the Japanese Kwantung Army,[115] allowed the Soviets to begin a massive counter-offensive that started on December 5 along a 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) front and pushed German troops 100–250 kilometres (62–160 mi) west.[116]

German successes in Europe encouraged Japan to increase pressure on European governments in south-east Asia. The Dutch government agreed to provide Japan oil supplies from the Dutch East Indies, while refusing to hand over political control of the colonies. Vichy France, by contrast, agreed to a Japanese occupation of French Indochina. [117] The United States, United Kingdom, and other Western governments reacted to the seizure of Indochina with a freeze on Japanese assets, while the United States (which supplied 80 percent of Japan's oil[118]) responded by placing a complete oil embargo.[119] The seizure meant Japan was essentially forced to choose between abandoning its ambitions in Asia and the prosecution of the war against China, or seizing the natural resources it needed by force; the Japanese military did not consider the former an option, and many officers considered the oil embargo an unspoken declaration of war.[120]

These attacks prompted the United States, United Kingdom, Australia,[4] other Western Allies,[5] and China (already fighting the Second Sino-Japanese War), to formally declare war on Japan. Germany and the other members of the Tripartite Pact responded by declaring war on the United States. In January, the United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, China, and 22 smaller or exiled governments issued the Declaration by United Nations, which affirmed the Atlantic Charter.[124] The Soviet Union did not adhere to the declaration; it maintained a neutrality agreement with Japan,[125][126] and exempted itself from the principle of self-determination.[107]

Germany retained the initiative as well. Exploiting dubious American naval command decisions, the German navyravaged Allied shipping off the American Atlantic coast.[132] Despite considerable losses, European Axis members stopped a major Soviet offensive in Central and Southern Russia, keeping most territorial gains they achieved during the previous year.[133] In North Africa, the Germans launched an offensive in January, pushing the British back to positions at the Gazala Line by early February,[134] followed by a temporary lull in combat which Germany used to prepare for their upcoming offensives.[135]

By November 1941, Commonwealth forces had launched a counter-offensive, Operation Crusader, in North Africa, and reclaimed all the gains the Germans and Italians had made.[151] In the West, concerns the Japanese might utilize bases in Vichy-held Madagascar caused the British to invade the island in early May 1942.[152] This success was offset soon after by an Axis offensive in Libya which pushed the Allies back into Egypt until Axis forces were stopped at El Alamein.[153] On the Continent, raids of Allied commandos on strategic targets, culminating in the disastrous Dieppe Raid,[154] demonstrated the Western Allies' inability to launch an invasion of continental Europe without much better preparation, equipment, and operational security.[155]

In the Soviet Union, both the Germans and the Soviets spent the spring and early summer of 1943 making preparations for large offensives in Central Russia. On July 4, 1943, Germany attacked Soviet forces around the Kursk Bulge. Within a week, German forces had exhausted themselves against the Soviets' deeply echeloned and well-constructed defences[164][165] and, for the first time in the war, Hitler cancelled the operation before it had achieved tactical or operational success.[166] This decision was partially affected by the Western Allies' invasion of Sicily launched on July 9 which, combined with previous Italian failures, resulted in the ousting and arrest of Mussolini later that month.[167] On July 12, 1943, the Soviets launched their own counter-offensives, thereby dispelling any hopes of the German Army for victory or even stalemate in the east. The Soviet victory at Kursk was one of the decisive turning points of the war, giving the Soviet Union the initiative on the Eastern Front.[168][169] The Germans attempted to stabilise their eastern front along the hastily fortified Panther-Wotan line, however, the Soviets broke through it at Smolensk and by the Lower Dnieper Offensives.[170]

By the start of July, Commonwealth forces in Southeast Asia had repelled the Japanese sieges in Assam, pushing the Japanese back to the Chindwin River[199] while the Chinese captured Myitkyina. In China, the Japanese were having greater successes, having finally captured Changsha in mid-June and the city of Hengyang by early August.[200] Soon after, they further invaded the province of Guangxi, winning major engagements against Chinese forces at Guilin and Liuzhou by the end of November[201] and successfully linking up their forces in China and Indochina by the middle of December.[202]

In the Pacific, American forces continued to press back the Japanese perimeter. In mid-June 1944 they began their offensive against the Mariana and Palau islands, scoring a decisive victory against Japanese forces in the Philippine Sea within a few days. These defeats led to the resignation of Japanese Prime Minister Tōjō and provided the United States with air bases to launch intensive heavy bomber attacks on the Japanese home islands. In late October, American forces invaded the Filipino island of Leyte; soon after, Allied naval forces scored another large victory during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, one of the largest naval battles in history.[203]

Axis collapse, Allied victory

On December 16, 1944, Germany attempted its last desperate measure for success on the Western Front by marshalling German reserves to launch a massive counter-offensive in the Ardennes to attempt to split the Western Allies, encircle large portions of Western Allied troops and capture their primary supply port at Antwerp in order to prompt a political settlement.[204] By January, the offensive had been repulsed with no strategic objectives fulfilled.[204] In Italy, the Western Allies remained stalemated at the German defensive line. In mid-January 1945, the Soviets attacked in Poland, pushing from the Vistula to the Oder river in Germany, and overran East Prussia.[205] On February 4, U.S., British, and Soviet leaders met in Yalta. They agreed on the occupation of post-war Germany,[206] and when the Soviet Union would join the war against Japan.[207]

Soon after the end of World War II, conflict flared again in many parts of the world. In China, nationalist and communist forces quickly resumed their civil war. Communist forces were eventually victorious and established the People's Republic of China on the mainland, while nationalist forces ended up retreating to Taiwan. In Greece, civil war broke out between Anglo-American supported royalist forces and communist forces, with the royalist forces victorious.

Economic recovery following the war was varied in differing parts of the world, though in general it was quite positive. In Europe, West Germanyrecovered quickly and doubled production from its pre-war levels by the 1950s.[246] Italy came out of the war in poor economic condition,[247] but by 1950s, the Italian economy was marked by stability and high growth.[248] The United Kingdom was in a state of economic ruin after the war,[249] and continued to experience relative economic decline for decades to follow.[250]

France rebounded quickly, and enjoyed rapid economic growth and modernisation.[251] The Soviet Union also experienced a rapid increase in production in the immediate post-war era.[252] In Asia, Japan experienced incredibly rapid economic growth, becoming one of the most powerful economies in the world by the 1980s.[253]

China, following the conclusion of its civil war, was essentially a bankrupt nation.[254] By 1953, economic restoration seemed fairly successful as production had resumed pre-war levels.[254] This growth rate mostly persisted, though it was briefly interrupted by the disastrous Great Leap Forward economic experiment. At the end of the war, the United States produced roughly half of the world's industrial output; by the early 1970s though, this dominance had lessened significantly.[255]

Impact

Casualties and war crimes

Estimates for the total casualties of the war vary, due to the fact that many deaths went unrecorded. Most suggest that some 60 million people died in the war, including about 20 million soldiers and 40 million civilians.[256][257][258] Many civilians died because of disease, starvation, massacres, bombing and deliberate genocide. The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people during the war, almost half of all World War II deaths.[259]

Of the total deaths in World War II, approximately 85 percent were on the Allied side (mostly Soviet and Chinese) and 15 percent were on the Axis side. One estimate is that 12 million civilians died in Nazi concentration camps,[260] 1.5 million by bombs, 7 million in Europe from other causes, and 7.5 million in China from other causes.[261]

Many of these deaths were a result of genocidal actions committed in Axis-occupied territories and other war crimes committed by German as well as Japanese forces. The most notorious of German atrocities was The Holocaust, the systematic genocide of Jews in territories controlled by Germany and its allies.

The Nazis also targeted other groups, including the Roma (targeted in the Porajmos), Slavs, and gay men, exterminating an estimated five million additional people.[262] The targets of the Axis-aligned Croatian Ustaše regime were mostly Serbs.[263]

The most well-known Japanese atrocity was the Nanking Massacre, in which several hundred thousand Chinese civilians were raped and murdered.[264] The Japanese military murdered from nearly 3 million to over 10 million civilians, mostly Chinese.[265] Mitsuyoshi Himeta reported 2.7 million casualties occurred during the Sankō Sakusen. General Yasuji Okamura implemented the policy in Heipei and Shantung.[266]

In addition to Nazi concentration camps, the Soviet gulags (labour camps) led to the death of citizens of occupied countries such as Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, as well as German prisoners of war (POWs) and even Soviet citizens who had been or were thought to be supporters of the Nazis.[279] Sixty percent of Soviet POWs of the Germans died during the war.[280]Richard Overy gives the number of 5.7 million Soviet POWs. Of those, 57 percent died or were killed, a total of 3.6 million.[281] Some of the survivors were treated as traitors upon their return to the USSR (see Order No. 270).

Japanese prisoner-of-war camps, many of which were used as labour camps, also had high death rates. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East found the death rate of Western prisoners was 27.1 percent (for American POWs, 37 percent),[282] seven times that of POWs under the Germans and Italians.[283] The death rate among Chinese POWs was much larger; a directive ratified on August 5, 1937 by Hirohito declared that the Chinese were no longer protected under international law.[284] While 37,583 prisoners from the UK, 28,500 from the Netherlands, and 14,473 from United States were released after the surrender of Japan, the number for the Chinese was only 56.[285]

According to historian Zhifen Ju, at least five million Chinese civilians from northern China and Manchukuo were enslaved between 1935 and 1941 by the East Asia Development Board, or Kōain, for work in mines and war industries. After 1942, the number reached 10 million.[286] The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in Java, between 4 and 10 million romusha (Japanese: "manual laborers"), were forced to work by the Japanese military. About 270,000 of these Javanese laborers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in South East Asia, and only 52,000 were repatriated to Java.[287]

Home fronts and production

In Europe, before the outbreak of the war, the Allies had significant advantages in both population and economics. In 1938, the Western Allies (United Kingdom, France, Poland and British Dominions) had a 30 percent larger population and a 30 percent higher gross domestic product than the European Axis (Germany and Italy); if colonies are included, it then gives the Allies more than a 5:1 advantage in population and nearly 2:1 advantage in GDP.[292] In Asia at the same time, China had roughly six times the population of Japan, but only an 89 percent higher GDP; this is reduced to three times the population and only a 38 percent higher GDP if Japanese colonies are included.[292]

Though the Allies' economic and population advantages were largely mitigated during the initial rapid blitzkrieg attacks of Germany and Japan, they became the decisive factor by 1942, after the United States and Soviet Union joined the Allies, as the war largely settled into one of attrition.[293] While the Allies' ability to out-produce the Axis is often attributed to the Allies having more access to natural resources, other factors, such as Germany and Japan's reluctance to employ women in the labour force,[294][295] Allied strategic bombing,[296][297] and Germany's late shift to a war economy[298] contributed significantly. Additionally, neither Germany nor Japan planned to fight a protracted war, and were not equipped to do so.[299][300] To improve their production, Germany and Japan used millions of slave labourers;[301]Germany used about 12 million people, mostly from Eastern Europe,[278] while Japan pressed more than 18 million people in Far East Asia.[286][287]

Occupation

In Europe, occupation came under two very different forms. In Western, Northern and Central Europe (France, Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries, and the annexed portions of Czechoslovakia) Germany established economic policies through which it collected roughly 69.5 billion reichmarks (27.8 billion US Dollars) by the end of the war; this figure does not include the sizable plunder of industrial products, military equipment, raw materials and other goods.[302] Thus, the income from occupied nations was over 40 percent of the income Germany collected from taxation, a figure which increased to nearly 40 percent of total German income as the war went on.[303]

In the East, the much hoped for bounties of Lebensraum were never attained as fluctuating front-lines and Soviet scorched earth policies denied resources to the German invaders.[304] Unlike in the West, the Nazi racial policy encouraged excessive brutality against what it considered to be the "inferior people" of Slavic descent; most German advances were thus followed by mass executions.[305] Although resistance groups did form in most occupied territories, they did not significantly hamper German operations in either the East[306] or the West[307] until late 1943.

In Asia, Japan termed nations under its occupation as being part of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, essentially a Japanese hegemony which it claimed was for purposes of liberating colonised peoples.[308] Although Japanese forces were originally welcomed as liberators from European domination in many territories, their excessive brutality turned local public opinions against them within weeks.[309] During Japan's initial conquest it captured 4 million barrels of oil (~5.5×105 tonnes) left behind by retreating Allied forces, and by 1943 was able to get production in the Dutch East Indies up to 50 million barrels (~6.8×10^6 t), 76 percent of its 1940 output rate.[309]

Advances in technology and warfare

During the war, aircraft continued their roles of reconnaissance, fighters, bombers and ground-support from World War I, though each area was advanced considerably. Two important additional roles for aircraft were those of the airlift, the capability to quickly move high-priority supplies, equipment and personnel, albeit in limited quantities;[310] and of strategic bombing, the targeted use of bombs against civilian areas in the hopes of hampering enemy industry and morale.[311]Anti-aircraft weaponry also continued to advance, including key defences such as radar and greatly improved anti-aircraft artillery, such as the German 88 mm gun. Jet aircraft saw their first limited operational use during World War II, and though their late introduction and limited numbers meant that they had no real impact during the war itself, the few which saw active service pioneered a mass-shift to their usage following the war.[312]

At sea, while advances were made in almost all aspects of naval warfare, the two primary areas of development were focused around aircraft carriers and submarines. Although at the start of the war aeronautical warfare had relatively little success, actions at Taranto, Pearl Harbor, the South China Sea and the Coral Sea soon established the carrier as the dominant capital ship in place of the battleship.[313][314][315] In the Atlantic, escort carriers proved to be a vital part of Allied convoys, increasing the effective protection radius dramatically and helping to close the Mid-Atlantic gap.[316] Beyond their increased effectiveness, carriers were also more economical than battleships due to the relatively low cost of aircraft[317] and their not requiring to be as heavily armoured.[318] Submarines, which had proved to be an effective weapon during the First World War[319] were anticipated by all sides to be important in the second. The British focused development on anti-submarineweaponry and tactics, such as sonar and convoys, while Germany focused on improving its offensive capability, with designs such as the Type VII submarine and Wolf pack tactics.[320] Gradually, continually improving Allied technologies such as the Leigh light, hedgehog, squid, and homing torpedoes proved victorious.

Land warfare changed drastically from the static front lines predominating in World War I to become much more fluid and mobile. An important change was the concept of combined arms warfare, wherein tight coordination was sought between the various elements of military forces; the tank, which had been used predominantly for infantry support in the First World War, had evolved into the primary weapon of these forces during the second.[321] In the late 1930s, tank design was considerably more advanced in all areas then it had been during World War I,[322] and advances continued throughout the war in increasing speed, armour and firepower.

At the start of the war, most armies considered the tank to be the best weapon against itself, and developed special-purpose tanks to that effect.[323] This line of thinking was all but negated by the poor performance of the relatively light early tank armaments against armour, and German doctrine of avoiding tank-versus-tank combat; the latter factor, along with Germany's use of combined arms, were among the key elements of their highly successful blitzkrieg tactics across Poland and France.[321] Many means of destroying tanks, including indirect artillery, anti-tank guns (both towed and self-propelled), mines, short-ranged infantry antitank weapons, and other tanks were utilised.[323] Even with large-scale mechanisation of the various armies, the infantry remained the backbone of all forces,[324] and throughout the war, most infantry equipment was similar to that utilised in World War I.[325]

The United States became the first country to arm its soldiers with a semi-automatic rifle, in this case the M-1 Garand. Some of the primary advances though, were the widespread incorporation of portable machine guns, a notable example being the German MG42, and various submachine guns which were well suited to close-quarters combat in urban and jungle settings.[325] The assault rifle, a late war development which incorporated many of the best features of the rifle and submachine gun, became the standard postwar infantry weapon for nearly all armed forces.[326][327]

Battlefield (documentary series), a television documentary series initially issued in 1994–1995 that explores many of the most important battles fought during the Second World War.

Notes

^"War Machines". Time. June 12, 1939. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,762392,00.html. Retrieved 2009-11-15. "Official military histories in Commonwealth and Western nations refer to the conflict as the Second World War (e.g. C.P. Stacey's Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War), while the United States' official histories refer to the conflict as World War II, spoken "World War Two". English translations of the official histories of other nations also tend to resolve into English as Second World War, for example Zweiter Weltkrieg in German. Non-English-language use typically translates to Second World War, for instance the Spanish Segunda Guerra mundial and the French Seconde Guerre mondiale. "Official" usage of these terms is giving way to popular usage and the two terms are becoming interchangeable even in formal military history. The term "Second World War" was originally coined in the 1920s. In 1928, US Secretary of StateFrank B. Kellogg advocated his treaty "for the renunciation of war" (known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact) as being a "practical guarantee against a second world war". The term came into widespread use as soon as the war began in 1939"

^Sommerville, Donald (December 14, 2008). The Complete Illustrated History of World War Two: An Authoritative Account of the Deadliest Conflict in Human History with Analysis of Decisive Encounters and Landmark Engagements. Lorenz Books. p. 5. ISBN 0754818985.

^ Among other starting dates sometimes used for World War II are the 1935 Italian invasion of Abyssinia; (Ben-Horin, Eliahu (1943). The Middle East: Crossroads of History. W. W. Norton & Co. p. 169; Taylor, A. J. P (1979). How Wars Begin. Hamilton. p. 124. ISBN 0241100178; Yisreelit, Hevrah Mizrahit (1965). Asian and African Studies, p. 191). For 1941 see (Taylor, A. J. P (1961). The Origins of the Second World War. Hamilton. p. vii; Kellogg, William O (2003). American History the Easy Way. Barron's Educational Series. p. 236 ISBN 0764119737). There also exists the viewpoint that both World War I and World War II are part of the same "European Civil War" or "Second Thirty Years War". (Canfora, Luciano; Jones, Simon (2006). Democracy in Europe: A History of an Ideology. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 155. ISBN 1405111313; Prin, Gwyn (2002). The Heart of War: On Power, Conflict and Obligation in the Twenty-First Century. Routledge. p. 11. ISBN 0415369606).

^Coogan, Anthony (July 1993). "The Volunteer Armies of Northeast China". History Today43. http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst?docId=5000186948. Retrieved 2009-11-14. "Although some Chinese troops in the Northeast managed to retreat south, others were trapped by the advancing Japanese Army and were faced with the choice of resistance in defiance of orders, or surrender. A few commanders submitted, receiving high office in the puppet government, but others took up arms against the invader. The forces they commanded were the first of the volunteer armies".

^Glantz 2001, p. 26, "By 1 November [the Wehrmacht] had lost fully 20% of its committed strength (686,000 men), up to 2/3 of its ½-million motor vehicles, and 65 percent of its tanks. The German Army High Command (OKH) rated its 136 divisions as equivalent to 83 full-strength divisions."

^ According to Ernest May (May, Ernest (1955). "The United States, the Soviet Union and the Far Eastern War". The Pacific Historical Review24 (2): 156.) Churchill stated: "Russian declaration of war on Japan would be greatly to our advantage, provided, but only provided, that Russians are confident that will not impair their Western Front".

^ The operation "was the most calamitous defeat of all the German armed forces in World War II" (Zaloga, Steven J (1996). Bagration 1944: The destruction of Army Group Centre. Osprey Publishing. p. 7. ISBN 1855324784.)

^"Armistice Negotiations and Soviet Occupation". US Library of Congress. http://countrystudies.us/romania/23.htm. Retrieved 2009-11-14. "The coup speeded the Red Army's advance, and the Soviet Union later awarded Michael the Order of Victory for his personal courage in overthrowing Antonescu and putting an end to Romania's war against the Allies. Western historians uniformly point out that the Communists played only a supporting role in the coup; postwar Romanian historians, however, ascribe to the Communists the decisive role in Antonescu's overthrow"

^Hastings, Max; Paul Henry, Collier (2004). The Second World War: a world in flames. Osprey Publishing. pp. 223–4. ISBN 1841768308.

^"The Universal Declaration of Human Rights". United Nations. http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/. Retrieved 2009-11-14. "* Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty"

^No, Kum-Sok; Osterholm, J. Roger (1996). A MiG-15 to Freedom: Memoir of the Wartime North Korean Defector who First Delivered the Secret Fighter Jet to the Americans in 1953. McFarland. ISBN 0786402105.

^"Infantry Weapons Of World War 2". Grey Falcon (Black Sun). http://greyfalcon.us/Infantry%20Weapons%20Of%20World%20War%202.htm. Retrieved 2009-11-14. "These all-purpose guns were developed and used by the German army in the 2nd half of World War 2 as a result of studies which showed that the ordinary rifle's long range is much longer than needed, since the soldiers almost always fired at enemies closer than half of its effective range. The assault rifle is a balanced compromise between the rifle and the sub-machine gun, having sufficient range and accuracy to be used as a rifle, combined with the rapid-rate automatic firepower of the sub machine gun. Thanks to these combined advantages, assault rifles such as the American M-16 and the Russian AK-47 are the basic weapon of the modern soldier"

Origins of
the War

1933

I shall live only a country where civil liberty, tolerance, and
equality of all citizens before the law prevail.

Albert
Einstein, developer of the theory of relativity, on leaving
National Socialist (Nazi) Germany for the United States.[citation needed]

1936

The National Socialist regime in Germany is based on a program
of ruthless force, which program has for its aim, first, the
enslavement of the German population to a National Socialist social
and political program, and then to use the force of these 67
million people for the extension of German political and economic
sovereignty over South-Eastern Europe — thus putting it into a
position to dominate Europe completely.

George Messersmith[citation needed]

1938

Peace in our time.

Announcement by British Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain, on returning from talks with Hitler at Munich,
saying that the Czechoslovak crisis and the threat of war was
over.[citation needed]

I believe there is sincerity and good will on both sides. My
main purpose has been to work for the pacification of Europe....
The question of Czechoslovakia is the latest and perhaps the most
dangerous [problem]. Now that we have got past it I feel that it
may be possible to make further progress along the road to sanity.

Many people, no doubt, honestly believe that they are only
giving away the interests of Czechoslovakia, whereas I fear we
shall find that we have deeply compromised, and perhaps fatally
endangered, the safety and even the independence of Great Britain
and France....
I foresee and foretell that the policy of submission will carry
with it restrictions upon the freedom of speech and debate in
Parliament, on public platforms, and discussions in the Press.

1939

Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard... leads me to
expect that the element uranium may be turned to a new and
important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects
of the situation call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick
action on the part of the administration.....
In the course of the last four months it has been made... possible
to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by
which vast amounts of power... would be generated. Now it appears
almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate
future.
This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs,
and it is conceivable — though much less certain — that extremely
powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb
of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very
well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding
territory. However, such bombs might very well prove too heavy for
transportation by air...
In view of this situation you may think it desirable to have some
permanent contact maintained between the administration and the
group of physicists working on chain reactions in America.

Letter dated August 2 (one month before the start of World War
II) from physicist Albert Einstein to President Roosevelt, warning
him of the danger that Nazi Germany could develop an atomic bomb.
This led to two later developments:
(1) Roosevelt’s efforts to aid all countries at war with Nazi
Germany, to help them defeat Germany before it could develop an
atomic bomb, and
(2) the top-secret "Manhattan Project" in which the government did
in fact work together with "the group of physicists working on
chain reactions in America" to develop an atomic bomb.

Start of the
War

1939

Blitzkrieg.[Quote?]

German for "lightning war": tanks, infantry (foot soldiers),
artillery, air aircraft, all controlled by radio, moved faster than
their enemies could react. German blitzkrieg methods successfully
defeated Poland in September 1939 and then were turned against
Denmark and Norway in April 1940, and against the Netherlands,
Belgium, and France in May 1940. France, which held out against
Germany for four years (1914-1918) and defeated it in World War I,
was overrun and defeated by the Germans in 6 weeks in the Spring of
1940. Only Great Britain, led by Prime Minister Winston Churchill,
held out in the West (until Nazi Germany attacked Communist Russia
in June 1941).

1940

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall
fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing
confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our
Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we
shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields
and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never
surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this
Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our
Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet,
would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New
World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and
the liberation of the old."

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, on June 10, 1940,
following the evacuation of the British Army from Dunkirk,
France.[citation needed]

I followed the German Army into Paris that June... and on June
19 got wind of where Hitler was going to lay down his terms for the
armistice.... It was to be on the same spot where the German Empire
had capitulated to France and her allies on November 11, 1918: in
the little clearing in the woods of Compiègne. There the Nazi
warlord would get his revenge.... Late on the afternoon of June 19
I drove out there and found German Army engineers... pulling the
[railroad] car [where the war ended in 1918] out to the tracks in
the center of the clearing on the exact spot, they said, where it
had stood at 5 A.M. on November, 1918, when at the dictation of
[French Marshal Ferdinand] Foch the German emissaries put their
signatures to the armistice.
And so was that on the afternoon of June 21 I stood by the edge of
the forest at Compiègne to observe the latest and greatest of
Hitler’s triumphs....
I look at the expression in Hitler’s face. I am but fifty yards
from him and see him through my glasses as though he were directly
in front of me. I have seen that face many times at the great
moments of his life. But today! It is afire with scorn, anger,
hate, revenge, triumph.

American war correspondent William L. Shirer, in his The
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960).

Hitler is striking with all the terrible force at his command.
His is a desperate gamble, and the stakes are nothing less than
domination of the whole human race.
If Hitler wins in Europe -- the strength of the British and French
armies and navies is forever broken — the United States will find
itself alone in a barbaric world — a world ruled by Nazis, with
‘spheres of influence’ assigned to their totalitarian allies.
However different the dictatorships may be, racially, they all
agree on one primary objective: ‘Democracy must be wiped from the
face of the earth.’...
There is nothing shameful in our desire to stay out of war, to save
our youth from the dive bombers and the flame throwing tanks in the
unutterable hell of modern warfare.
But is there not an evidence of suicidal insanity in our failure to
help those who now stand between us and the creators of this hell?

Newspaper advertisement from the Committee to Defend America,
whose ideas were identical with those of President Roosevelt.[specific citation needed]

All aid to the Allies short of war.

President Roosevelt's redefinition of neutrality.[citation needed]

We must be the great arsenal of democracy.

President Roosevelt, on the need to provide weapons to the
British after the Germans defeated France in May-June 1940.[citation needed]

First they were too cowardly to take part. now they are in a
hurry so they can share the spoils.

Hitler on the Italian decleration of war on France and Great
Britain, June 10th, 1940.-Martin Gilber, the Second World war
pg. 90

On this tenth day of June 1940, the hand that held the dagger,
has struck it into the back of its neighbor.

Franklin Roosevelt on the Italian decleration of war on France
and Britain, June 10th, 1940.-Martin Gilber, the Second World
war pg. 90

I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again:
your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.

Statement by President Roosevelt during his re-election
campaign.[citation needed]

The butchering may continue as it will, it shall remain the
historical guilt of the Western powers that they did not promptly
provide the sharpest preventative measures against the continued
attack-politics Germany undertook. Possibilities existed for this,
but no measures were seized upon.

1941

The Lend-Lease policy, translated into legislative form,
stunned a Congress and a nation wholly sympathetic to Great
Britain. The Kaiser’s blank check to Austria-Hungary in the First
World War was a piker compared to the Roosevelt blank check of
World War II. It warranted my worst fears for the future of
America, and it definitely stamps the president as
war-minded....
Never before have the American people been asked or compelled to
give... so completely of their tax dollars to any foreign nation.
Never before has the Congress of the United States been asked by
any President to violate international law. Never before has this
nation resorted to duplicity in the conduct of its foreign affairs.
Never before has the United States given to one man the power to
strip this nation of its defenses....
Approval of this legislation means war, open and complete warfare.
I, therefore, ask the American people before they supinely accept
it — Was the last World War worthwhile?
If it were, then we should lend and lease war materials. If it
were, then we should lend and lease American boys. President
Roosevelt has said we would be repaid by England. We will be....
Our boys will be returned — returned in caskets, maybe; returned
with bodies maimed; returned with minds warped and twisted by
sights of horrors and the scream and shriek of high-powered shells.

I know I will be severely criticized by the interventionists in
America when I say we should not enter a war unless we have a
reasonable chance of winning.... We are no better prepared today
than France was when the interventionists persuaded her to attack
the Siegfried Line....
It is not only our right but it is our obligation as American
citizens to look at this war objectively and to weigh our chances
for success if we should enter it. I have attempted to do this,
especially from the standpoint of aviation; and I have been forced
to the conclusion that we cannot win this war for England,
regardless of how much assistance we extend.

Joint declaration of the President of United States and the
Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, representing His Majesty’s
government in the United Kingdom....
First, their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or
other.
Second, they desire to see no territorial changes that do not
accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples
concerned.
Third, they respect the rights of all peoples to choose the form of
government under which they will live.
Fourth, they will endeavor, with due respect for their existing
obligations, to further the enjoyment of all states, great or
small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the
trade and to the raw materials of the world.
Fifth, they desire to bring about the fullest collaboration between
all nations in the economic field....
Sixth, after the final destruction of Nazi Germany, they hope to
see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means
of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries....
Seventh, such a peace should enable all men to traverse the high
seas and oceans without hindrance.
Eighth, they believe that all of the nations of the world, for
realistic as well as spiritual reasons, must come to the
abandonment of the use of force.... They believe, pending the
establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security,
that the disarmament of such nations is essential.”

The Atlantic Charter, written by President Roosevelt and Prime
Minister Churchill, meeting on two warships off Newfoundland in
August 1941.

Japan
Attacks Pearl Harbor

1927

In the future if we want to control China, we must first crush
the United States just as in the past we had to fight in the
Russo-Japanese War. But in order to conquer China we must first
conquer Manchuria and Mongolia. In order to conquer the world, we
must first conquer China. If we succeed in conquering China the
rest of the Asiatic countries and the South Sea countries will fear
us and surrender to us. Then the world will realize that Eastern
Asia is ours and will not dare to violate our rights. This is the
plan left to us by Emperor Meiji, the success of which is essential
to our national existence.

1941

It has been 20 years since the Navy signed the humiliating
Washington Naval Treaty. During [that] time we have whetted our
swords to stab [the] US.

A Japanese officer.[citation needed]

The Empire will... crush America, British, and Dutch
strongholds in East Asia and the Western Pacific... and secure
major resource areas and lines of communication in order to prepare
a posture of long term self-sufficiency. All available methods will
be exerted to lure out the main elements of the US fleet at an
appropriate time to attack and destroy them.

Tai Bei-Ei-Ran-Shou Senso Shumatsu Sokushin-ni Kansuru Fukuan
(A Plan for Completion of the War Against the United States, Great
Britain, the Netherlands, and Chiang Kai-Shek [of Nationalist
China]), action plan adopted at a meeting of the Japanese Imperial
General Headquarters and the Cabinet (November 1941).

Message sent by Japanese Imperial Navy Headquarters to the
carrier fleet approaching Pearl Harbor (2 December 1941).[citation needed]

Tora! Tora! Tora!

(Translated: Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!'); signal at 0730 (local
time), 7 December 1941 from Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, leading the
first wave of the attack, to the carrier fleet that his "tigers"
succeeded in their surprise attack at Pearl Harbor.[citation needed]

Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy
— the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately
attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe
damage to American naval and military forces. Very many American
lives have been lost....
As commander in chief of the Army and Navy I have directed that all
measures be taken for our defense.
Always we will remember the character of the onslaught against us.
No matter how long it my take us to overcome this premeditated
invasion, the American people, in their righteous might, will win
through to absolute victory. I believe I interpret the will of the
Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only
defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make very certain that
this form of treachery shall never endanger us again....
With confidence in our armed forces — with the unbounded
determination of our people — we will gain the inevitable triumph —
so help us God.
I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and
dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December, a state of war has
existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

President Roosevelt’s speech to a joint session of Congress on
Dec. 8, 1941.

Both America and Britain... have aggravated the disturbances in
East Asia.... These two powers, inducing other countries to follow
suit, increased military preparations on all sides of Our
Empire.... They have obstructed by every means Our peaceful
commerce, and finally resorted to a direct severance of economic
relations....
Patently We waited and long have We endured, in hope that Our
Government might retrieve the situation in peace. But Our
adversaries, showing not the least spirit of conciliation, have
unduly delayed a settlement.... Our Empire for its existence and
delf-defense has no other recourse but to appeal to arms and to
crush every obstacle in its path.

Japanese Emperor Hirohito, stating Japan’s reasons for
attacking the United States and Great Britain (December 8,
1941).[citation needed]

The
United States Fights Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy

1941

America is half Judaized and the other half Negrified.

German Leader Adolf Hitler, speech to the German Reichstag
(Parliament) declaring war on the United States (December 11,
1941).[citation needed]

1942

Germany first.[Quote?]

Slogan for American strategy for fighting the war: send most
forces against Nazi Germany, then turn to Japan after the defeat of
Germany.[citation needed]

Why am I fighting?
Not, certainly, ‘just because I was drafted’ — the cynical, easy
retort of the half-believer. I was a draftee, yes — because
circumstances prevented me from joining up when I should have
liked. I envy and honor the boys who enlisted — the ones who,
seeing their country’s need, acted upon it without waiting to be
called — or compelled.
Not just because of Pearl Harbor. That’s an immediate reason,
yes,... [b]ut Pearl Harbor, or some other harbor, would have come
sooner or later; indeed, might have come too late....
Not to “force our ideas on the rest of the world”.... I am fighting
for the right of peoples to say how they shall be governed. If they
like our form of government, fine. If not, let them have another —
but let the choice be theirs, not something handed down to them by
a self-styled “Leader” — or a yoke laid on them by an
invader....
For what, exactly, are we fighting?...
Well, it goes a long way back.
It goes back to the taproots of America. Back beyond the World War,
with its simple slogan of fighting to make the world safe for
democracy. Back beyond ‘98, when we fought to set Cuba free. Back
beyond the Civil War when we fought to make and keep America a
nation of freemen. Back beyond 1812, when our cry was freedom of
the seas. Back even beyond the Revolution that saw our forefathers
pledge ‘their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor’ that
the colonies might be freed from the yoke of the Hanoverian king.
Back to the Bill of Rights, back, back to the Magna Carta seven
hundred years ago — that first great landmark pf man’s history-long
effort to be politically free.... Freedom of the individual to rule
himself, to make his laws, to have his say in council, to set his
course and follow his star!
Fine words you say; but what do they have to do with fighting a
Germany whose chief concern was Europe, a Japan whose ambitions
were — perhaps — only Oriental?
I say they have a lot to do with Japan and Germany.... Nazism
dominant in Europe and Asia would result... In the emergence and
ultimate dominance of the Nazi principle in American life.
Men (some, not all — but alas! Enough) would have looked at each
other in confusion and alarm and doubt. They would have said,
fearingly, ‘Democracy has failed in Europe. We thought it was the
best way, but how can it be, if it is so weak? Maybe the Nazis have
something. Maybe... maybe...’ So the whispers would have
started....
That’s why I am fighting.... I’m trying to kill Fascism now, before
it has a chance to eat in its ugly way at the American vitals....
I’m fighting because the world, like our own America, ‘cannot exist
half slave and half free.’ I’m fighting because I think China has a
right to live as a nation, not exist as a vast puppet
state....
I’m fighting because I want to be able to look my children in the
face some day and say to them that America wasn’t afraid to fight
once again for an ideal, the ideals that have made America great. I
love peace, but I hate war for the shocking waste of everything
that it is; but even war is preferable to supine acquiescence in
international murder, not merely of the body, but of the spirit.

Sgt. Henry C. Nelson, “To Be Able to Look My Children in the
Face,” in Why I Fight, published by the U.S. Army.

Wolf packs.[Quote?]

Groups of German submarines that conducted coordinated attacks
against Allied merchant ship convoys crossing the Atlantic.

G.I.[Quote?]

Galvanised iron, a nickname for american soldiers in reference
to their galvanised iron water canteens, helmets and other
equipment.[citation needed]

The mightiest bomber ever built.

A description of the B-17 Flying Fortress, flown to
England to participate in Eighth Air Force bombing attacks on
German industrial targets.[citation needed]

1943

It is difficult to go anywhere in London without having the
feeling that Britain is now Occupied Territory.

Common complaint of British people, as American troops were
shipped to Britain to prepare for the invasion of German-occupied
Europe.[citation needed]

We are out to win the war in the quickest and most economical
way.

Gen. George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff.[citation needed]

In the magazines war seemed romantic and exciting, full of
heroics and vitality.... I saw instead men... suffering and wishing
they were somewhere else.

War correspondent Ernie Pyle.[citation needed]

1944

People of Western Europe: A landing was made this morning on
the coast of France by troops of the Allied Expeditionary Force.
This landing is part of the concerted United Nations plan for the
liberation of Europe, made in conjunction with our great Russian
allies.... I call upon those who love freedom to stand with us now.
Together we shall achieve victory.

Radio address by U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the
commander of allied forces, on "D-Day", the start of the Allied
invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe, beginning with the landing in
France on June 6. Note: “D-Day” is the term used in military
planning that specifies the date that an amphibious (ship-to-shore)
invasion occurs.

We saw the bomb explosions causing fires that illuminated
clouds in the otherwise dark sky. We were twelve miles offshore as
we climbed into our seat assignments on the LCAs [amphibious
landing craft] and were lowered into the heavy sea from davits. The
navy hadn’t begun its firing because it was still dark. We couldn’t
see the armada but we knew it was there.
Prior to loading, friends said their so longs and good lucks....
All of us had a letter signed by the Supreme Commander, General
Eisenhower, saying that we were about to embark upon a great
crusade. A few of my cohorts autographed it an I carried it in my
wallet throughout the war.
The Channel was extremely rough, and it wasn’t long before we had
to help the craft’s pumps by bailing with our helmets. The cold
spray blew in and soon we were soaking wet....
As the sky lightened, the armada became visible. The smoking and
burning French shoreline also became more defined. At 0600, the
huge guns of the Allied navies opened up with must have been one of
the greatest artillery barrages ever.... I could see the
[battleship] Texas firing broadside into the coastline.
Bomm-ba-ba-boom-ba-ba-boom! Within minutes, giant swells from the
recoil of those guns nearly swamped us and added to the seasickness
and misery. But one could also see the two-thousand-pound missiles
tumbling on their targets. Twin fuselaged P-38 fighter-bombers were
also overhead protecting us from the Luftwaffe [German Air Force]
and giving us a false sense of security. This should be a piece of
cake....
A few thousand yards from shore we rescued three or four survivors
from a craft that had been swamped and sunk....
About two or three hundred yards from shore we encountered
artillery fire. Near misses sent seawater skyward and then it
rained back on us....
About 150 yards from shore, I raised my head despite the warning,
‘Keep your head down.’ I saw the boat on our right taking a
terrific licking from small arms. Tracer bullets were bouncing and
skipping off the ramp and sides as the enemy zeroed in on the boat
which had beached a few minutes before us. Had we not delayed a few
minutes to pick up the survivors of the sunken craft, we might have
taken that concentration of fire.
Great plumes of water from enemy artillery and mortars sprouted
close by. We knew then this was not going to be a walk-in. No one
thought the enemy would give us this kind of opposition at the
water’s edge. We expected A and B Companies to have the beach
secured by the time we landed. In reality no one had set foot in
our sector. The coxswain [boat driver] had missed the Vierville
church steeple, our point to guide on, and the tides also helped
pull us two hundred yards east.
The location didn’t make much difference. We could hear the
‘p-r-r-r-r, p-r-r-r-r’ of enemy machine guns to our right, towards
the west. It was obvious someone was... getting chewed up where we
had been supposed to come in.
The ramp went down while shells exploded on land and in the water.
Unseen snipers were shooting down from the cliffs, but the most
havoc came from automatic weapons....
When I did get out, I was in the water. It was very difficult to
shed sixty pounds of equipment, and if one were a weak swimmer he
could drown.... Many were in the water, and drowned, good swimmers
or not. There were dead men floating in the water, and live men
acting dead, letting the tide take them in....
I crouched down to chin deep in the water as shells fell at the
water’s edge. Small arms fire kicked up sand. I noticed a GI
running, trying to get across the beach. He was weighed down with
equipment and having difficulty moving. An enemy gunner shot him.
He screamed for a medic. An aidman moved quickly to help him and he
was also shot. I’ll never forget seeing that medic lying next to
that wounded soldier, both of them screaming. They died in
minutes.
Boys were turned into men. Some would be very brave men; others
would soon be very dead men, but any who survived would be
frightened men. Some wet their pants, others cried unashamedly.
Many just had to find within themselves the strength to get the job
done. Discipline and training took over....
I took off my assault jacket and spread out my raincoat so I could
clean my rifle. It was then I saw bullet holes in my jacket and
raincoat. I lit my first cigarette; I had to rest and compose
myself because I became weak in the knees.”

Bob Slaughter, 29th Infantry Division, who landed on Omaha
Beach at Normandy, where 3,500 Americans and 700 Germans were
killed on June 6, 1944, in the battle of the beachhead.[citation needed]

[The assault units] were disorganized, had suffered heavy
casualties and were handicapped by losses of valuable equipment....
They were pinned down along the beach by intense enemy fire....
Personnel and equipment were being piled ashore... where congested
groups afforded food targets for the enemy.

An American officer at the landing beach at Normandy, June 6,
1944.[citation needed]

Sure, we all want to get home. We want to get this thing over
with. But the quickest way to get it over with is to go get the
bastards. The quicker they’re whipped, the quicker we go home. The
shortest way home is through Berlin.

And there’s one thing you’ll be able to say when you get home.
When you’re sitting around your fireside, with your brat on your
knee, and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you
won’t have to say you shoveled shit in Louisiana.

General George S. Patton, Jr., speech to his Third Army before
it was sent to join in the Battle of France (July 1944).

Any commander who fails to obtain his objective, and who is not
dead or seriously wounded, has not done his full duty.

Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., instructions to the Third Army.[citation needed]

1945

Austin White — Chicago, Ill. — 1918
Austin White — Chicago, Ill. — 1945
This is the last time I want to write my name here.

Inscription found near Verdun, France by a reporter for Yank
magazine (a magazine for the soldiers).[specific citation needed]

The mission of this Allied Force was fulfilled at 3 a.m., local
time, May 7, 1945.

Message from Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, SCAEF (Supreme
Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force) to the Combined Chiefs of
Staff (the command of British and American forces), on the signing
of the surrender by German delegates at Eisenhower’s headquarters
at Rheims, France.[specific citation needed]

The War in Europe: The
Holocaust

1944

When we got off the cattle truck, they ordered, ‘Men right;
women, left.’... I went with my father. My little sister, Esther,
she went with my mother. Esther was only eleven. She was holding my
mother’s hand. When they made a selection of the women, Esther
clung to my mother. My mother wouldn’t give her up.... They went
straight to the gas chamber.

Account of Moritz Vegh, sent to the Auschwitz extermination
camp with his family at age 13. He worked as a slave laborer and
was the only survivor from his family.[citation needed]

1945

In another part of the camp they showed me the children,
hundreds of them. Some were only 6 years old. One rolled up his
sleeves, showed me his number. It was tattooed on his arm. B-6030,
it was. The others showed me their numbers. They will carry them
till they die.... I could see their ribs through their thin shirts.

I want every American unit not actually in the front lines to
see this place.... We are told that the American soldier does not
know what he is fighting for. Now, at least, he will know what he
is fighting against.

Comment of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied
Commander, after visiting a Nazi extermination camp, where bodies
were stacked in the barracks the smell of burnt bodies came from
crematoria.[citation needed]

For months, for years we had one wish only: the wish that some
of us would escape alive, in order to tell the world what the Nazi
convict prisons were like..... There was the systematic... urge to
use human beings as slaves and to kill them when they could work no
more.

What makes this inquest significant is that these prisoners
represent sinister influences that will lurk in the world long
after their bodies have returned to dust. They are living symbols
of racial hatreds, of terrorism and violence, and of the arrogance
and cruelty of power.

U. S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, serving as a judge
at the Nürnberg Trials of surviving Nazi leaders for war crimes and
crimes against humanity.[citation needed]

The United States
Fights Imperial Japan

1941

While you may have your initial success, due to timing and
surprise, the time will come when you too will have your losses,
but there will be this great difference. You will not only be
unable to make up your losses, but will grow weaker as time grows
on, while on the other hand we will not only make up our losses but
will grow stronger as time goes on. It is inevitable that we will
crush you before we are through with you.

Admiral Harold Stark, USN, Chief of Naval Operations, speaking
to the Japanese ambassador before the war.

If I am ordered to fight against US, I will make a good job for
half [year] or year. But I cannot do it for a few years.

Japan on the Offensive: The Fall of the Philippines (December 1941-
May 1942)

1942

We're the battling bastards of Bataan;
No papa, no mama, no Uncle Sam;
No aunts, no uncles, no nieces;
No pills, no planes, no artillery pieces....
And nobody gives a damn.

Sung by soldiers defending the Bataan peninsula, on the
northwest of Manila Bay, the last major force holding out against
Japanese invaders of the Philippines.[citation needed]

Suppose you’re a sergeant machine-gunner, and your army is
retreating and the enemy advancing. The captain takes you to a
machine gun covering the road. ‘You’re to stay here and hold this
position,’ he tells you. ‘For how long?’ you ask. ‘Never mind,’ he
answers, ‘just hold it.’ Then you know you’re expendable. In a way
anything can be expendable — money or gasoline or equipment or most
usually men. They are expending you and that machine gun to get
time.

William L. White, They Were Expendable, his account of the fall
of the Philippines to the Japanese in early 1942.

The sun beat down upon my throbbing hear.... Along the road the
jungle was a misty green haze, swimming before my sweat-filled
eyes.
The hours dragged by, and a great number of prisoners reached the
end of their endurance. The drop-outs became more numerous. The
fell by the hundreds in the road....
There was the crack of a pistol and the shot rang out across the
jungle. There was another shot, and more shots, and I knew that,
straggling along behind us, was a clean-up squad of Japanese,
killing their helpless victims on the white dusty road.... The
shots continued, goading us on. I gritted my teeth. 'Oh, God, I've
got to keep going. I can’t stop. I can’t die like that'.

Sergeant Sidney Stewart, a survivor of the Bataan Death March
of April 1942, when the Japanese sent 70,000 American and Filipino
prisoners 60 miles from the Bataan Peninsula to their prison camps.
About 10,000 prisoners were killed by gunshot, bayonet, or
starvation during the march.[citation needed]

The President of the United States ordered me to break through
the Japanese lines and proceed from Corregidor to Australia for the
purpose, as I understand it, of organizing the American offensive
against Japan, a primary objective of which is the relief of the
Philippines.
I came through and I shall return.

General Douglas MacArthur, remarks to
reporters in Australia after he had been ordered by Pres. Roosevelt
to leave the fortress on the island of Corregidor in Manila Bay
before it fell to the Japanese (March 30, 1942).[specific citation needed]

God have mercy on us!

General MacArthur, on learning of the state of Australia’s lack
of preparedness to meet an attack by the Japanese. What he didn't
realise was that Australia had five militia divisions, and five
high quality regular army divisions on the way home from the Middle
East, while the Americans had only one division on the way from San
Fransisco.[citation needed]

Japan’s Offensive Halted: The Battle of Midway (June
1942)

1942

[The Doolittle Air Raid on Tokyo in April 1942] ended the
debate... as to whether Midway was to be attacked.

Admiral Yamamoto, Commander, Japanese Fleet.[citation needed]

There is no choice but to force a decisive fleet encounter. If
we set out from here to do that and we go to the bottom of the
Pacific in a double suicide, things will be peaceful on the high
seas for some time.

Admiral Yamamoto to the Japanese Naval General Staff before
Operation Mi, the attack on Midway Island.[citation needed]

Surprise was paramount because we believed that the Japanese
did not know of the presence of our carriers.

Commander Joseph Worthington, Commanding Officer of the
destroyer USS Benham, on the US Navy’s planning for the Battle of
Midway, which relied on the breaking of the Japanese code.[citation needed]

Within five minutes all her [Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi's]
planes would be launched. Five minutes! Who would have dreamed that
the tide of battle would shift completely in that brief interval of
time?... The first Zero fighter gathered speed and whizzed of the
deck. At that instant a lookout screamed, 'Hell divers [U.S. Navy
dive bombers]!' I looked up to see three black enemy planes
plummeting toward our ship. Bombs! Down they came straight toward
me!

Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, a Japanese officer on the Akagi, in
Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan. In the Battle of Midway (June
3-6, 1942), the U.S. Navy stopped the Japanese advance on Hawaii
and sunk four of the enemy’s aircraft carriers. The U.S. forces
would advance without letup in the next years of the war in the
Pacific.

Turning the Tide in the
Pacific

1942

[My forces are] unable to control the sea in the Guadalcanal
area.... The situation is not hopeless but it is certainly
critical.

1943

I look upon the Guadalcanal and Tulagi operations as the
turning point from offensive to defensive, and the cause of our
setback there was our inability to increase our forces at the same
speed as you.

Japanese Admiral Osami Nagano, Chief of Naval Staff, to
American officers after the war.

America's
Amphibious Advance in the Pacific

1939

A landing on a foreign coast in the face of hostile troops has
always been one of the most difficult operations of war. It has now
become much more difficult , almost impossible, because of the
vulnerable target which a convoy of transports offers to the
defenders’ air force. Even more vulnerable is the process of
disembarkation in open boats.

British military writer Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, in The
Defense of Britain (1939).

1943-1945

The outstanding achievement of this war in the field of joint
undertakings was the perfection of amphibious operations, the most
difficult of all operations in modern warfare.

Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, in The War Reports of General of
the Army George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff, General of the Army H.
H. Arnold, Commanding General, Army Air Forces, Fleet Admiral
Ernest J. King, Commander-in-Chief, US Fleet and Chief of Naval
Operations (1947).

1943

Island hopping.[Quote?]

The strategy advanced by General Douglas MacArthur to advance against
the Japanese in the Pacific, bypassing as many strongly-held enemy
islands as possible, only landing to fight it out on islands needed
to build air bases to support the next landing.

1944

[The campaign objective is to obtain] positions from which the
ultimate surrender of JAPAN can be forced by intensive air
bombardment , by sea and air blockade, and by invasion if
necessary.

Message sent by Emperor Hirohito to encourage the Japanese
forces defending Saipan.[citation needed]

Our ships have been salvaged and are retiring at high speed
toward the Japanese fleet.

Admiral William F. (“Bull”) Halsey, radio message following
Japanese propaganda broadcasts about most of his Third Fleet had
been lost on the Battle of Leyte Gulf (October 1944).[citation needed]

People of the Philippines, I have returned!
By the grace of Almighty God, our forces stand again on Philippine
soil.... Rally to me!

General Douglas MacArthur, radio broadcast after he landed
ashore at Leyte (October 20, 1944).[specific citation needed]

1945

The Navajo Code Talkers have proved to be excellent
Marines, intelligent, industrious, efficient.
Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo
Jima.

Comments about the "Code Talkers", Navajo Indian soldiers and
Marines, who communicated on radio using their native language,
which could not be understood by any Japanese who were
listening.[citation needed]

To be avoided, and if necessary ignored, were gung-ho platoon
leaders who drew enemy fire by ordering spectacular charges. Ground
wasn’t gained that way; it was won by small groups of men, five or
six in a cluster, who moved warily forward in a kind of
autohypnosis, advancing in a mysterious concert with similar groups
on their flanks.

Sgt. William Manchester, USMC, reflections on ground combat in
the Battle of Okinawa, in his personal history of the Pacific War,
Goodbye Darkness.

Aboard a Fast Carrier in the Forward Pacific Area, May 11
(Special-Delayed) -- Two Japanese suicide planes carrying 1,000
pounds of bombs plunged into the flight deck of Vice Admiral Marc
A. Mitscher’s own flagship today,... transforming one of our
greatest flat-tops (aircraft carriers) into a floating torch, with
flames soaring nearly 1,000 feet into the sky.
For eight seemingly interminable hours that followed the ship and
her crew fought as tense and terrifying a battle for survival as
had ever been witnessed in the Pacific, but when dusk closed in,
the U.S.S. Bunker Hill — horribly crippled and still filmed by
wisps of smoke and steam from her smoldering embers — was plowing
along under her own power on the distant horizon, safe. Tomorrow
she will spend another eight terrible hours burying at sea men who
died to save her.
From the deck of a neighboring carrier a few hundred yards distant
I watched the Bunker Hill burn. It is hard to believe that men
could survive those flames or that metal could withstand such
heat.
One minute our task force was cruising in lazy circles about 60
miles off Okinawa without a care in the world and apparently
without a thought of an enemy plane. The next the Bunker Hill was a
pillar of flame. It was as quick as that — like summer
lightning....
For the first time in a week, our own ship had secured from general
quarters an hour or two before... and those men not on regular
watch were permitted to relax from the deadly sixteen-hour vigil
they had put in at battle stations every day since we had entered
the battle area.
So it was on the Bunker Hill. Exhausted men not on watch were
catching a catnap. Aft, on the flight deck, 34 planes were waiting
to take off. Their tanks were filled to the last drop with highly
volatile aviation gasoline. Their guns were loaded to the last
possible round of ammunition....
Just appearing over the horizon were the planes returning form an
early mission.... Then it was that a man aboard our ship caught the
first glimpse of three enemy planes and cried a warning. But before
general quarters could be sounded on this ship, and before half a
dozen shots could be fired by the Bunker Hill, the first kamikaze
had dropped his 550-pound bomb on the ship and plunged his plane
squarely into the 34 waiting planes in a shower of burning
gasoline....
But before a move could be made to fight the flames, another
kamikaze came whining out of the clouds, straight into the deadly
anti-aircraft guns of the ship....
Minutes later a third Jap suicider zoomed down to finish the job.
Ignoring the flames and the smoke that swept around them, the men
in the Bunker Hill’s gun galleries stuck to their posts.... It was
a neighboring destroyer, which finally scored a direct hit on the
Jap and sent him splashing harmlessly into the sea....
For more than an hour there was no visible abatement in the fury of
the flames.... Crippled as she was she plowed ahead at top speed,
and the wind that swept her decks blew the flames and smoke astern
over the fantail, preventing the blaze from spreading forward on
the flight deck.... Trapped on the fantail itself, men faced the
flames and fought grimly on; with... no way of knowing how much of
the ship remained on the other side of that fiery wall....
After nearly three hours of almost hopeless fighting, she had
brought the fires under control, and though it was many more hours
before they were completely extinguished, the battle was won and
the ship was saved.
A goodly thick book could not record all the acts of heroism that
were performed aboard that valiant ship today....
[A]t the cost of three pilots and three planes today the enemy
killed a probable total of 392 of our men, wounded 264 others,
destroyed about 70 planes and wrecked a fine and famous ship. The
flight deck of that ship tonight looks like the crater of a
volcano.... But the ship has not been sunk.... As it is the Bunker
Hill will steam back to Bremerton Navy Yard under her own power and
there will be repaired.... But within a few weeks she will be back
again, sinking more ships, downing more planes, and bombing out
more Japanese air fields.
Perhaps her next task will be to cover the invasion of Tokyo
itself!

Phelps Adams, "Kamikazes: An Eyewitness Account", from
Masterpieces of War Reporting: Great Moments of World War
II, ed. Louis Snyder (1962), pp. 487-494. The "Kamikaze"or
"Divine wind" in Japanese: referred to suicide pilots who would fly
their bomb-laden planes into American naval ships. The USS Bunker
Hill was repaired in Bremerton, Washington and returned to the
Pacific Fleet in September. The ship remained in the Navy until it
was sold for scrap in 1973.

Atomic Bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki

1945

Please, for God's sake, stop sending our finest youth to be
murdered in places like Iwo Jima.... Why can't objectives be
accomplished some other way?

Letter written to the Secretary of the Navy.[citation needed]

National Resistance Program.[Quote?]

Japanese plan for using all males, ages 15 to 60, and females,
ages 17 to 40, in combat roles in the expected Allied invasion of
the Japanese home islands, planned to begin with Operation Olympic
on 1 November 1945. Postwar analysis of Japanese documents showed
that "sacrificing 20 million Japanese lives" was expected.

[Japanese defenses threatened] to grow to [the] point where we
attack on a ratio of one (1) to one (1) which is not a recipe for
victory.

Major General Charles Willoughby, G-2 (chief of intelligence)
on General MacArthur’s staff, on the buildup of Japanese forces in
the zone of the planned Operation Olympic assault.[citation needed]

When I saw a very strong light, a flash, I put my arms over my
face unconsciously.... The whole city was destroyed and burning.
There was no place to go.

Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on
Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more
power than 20,000 tons of TNT....
With this bomb we have now added a new and revolutionary increase
in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed
forces....
It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the
universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been
loosed against those who brought war to the Far East....
Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against
those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against
those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners
of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying
international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten
the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and
thousands of young Americans.
We shall continue to use it until we completely destroy Japan’s
power to make war. Only a Japanese surrender will stop us.

President Harry S Truman, radio address to the
American people, following the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan (August
6).

You think of the lives which would have been lost in an
invasion of Japan’s main islands — a staggering number of
Americans, but millions more of Japanese — and you thank God for
the atomic bomb.

Comment of one Marine in the Pacific.[citation needed]

Would it not be wondrous for this whole nation to be destroyed
like a beautiful flower.

General Anami, Japanese War Minister, at a meeting of Japan’s
Supreme Council for the Direction of the War (August 9, 1945).[citation needed]

We of the peace party were assisted by the atomic bomb in our
endeavor to end the war.

Koichi Kido, aide of Emperor Hirohito.[citation needed]

[The atomic bombings were a] gift from heaven.

Mitsumasa Yonai, Japanese Navy Minister, who argued that the
bombings caused the collapse of the power of leaders who favored
continuing the war.[citation needed]

The atomic bomb was a golden opportunity given by heaven for
Japan to end the war.

We declared war on America and Britain out of Our sincere
desire to ensure Japan's self-preservation and the stabilization of
East Asia, it being far from Our thought either to infringe upon
the sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial
aggrandisement. But now the war has lasted for nearly four years.
Despite the best that has been done by everyone -- the gallant
fighting of the military and naval forces, the diligence and
assiduity of Our servants of the State and the devoted service of
Our one hundred million people, the war situation has developed not
necessarily to Japan's advantage, while the general trends of the
world have all turned against her interest. Moreover, the enemy has
begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to
damage is indeed incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent
lives. Should We continue to fight, it would not only result in an
ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also
it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.

Surrender speech of Emperor Hirohito (August 15, 1945). This was the first
occasion in which common Japanese heard the voice of their
emperor.[specific citation needed]

Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great
victory has been won. The skies no longer rain death... men
everywhere walk upright in sunlight. The entire world lies quietly
at peace. The holy mission has been completed. And in reporting
this to you, the people, I speak for the thousands of silent lips,
forever stilled among the jungles and the beaches and in the deep
waters of the Pacific which marked the way....
As I look back on the long, tortuous trail from those grim days of
Bataan and Corregidor, when an entire world lived in fear, when
democracy was on the defensive everywhere, when modern civilization
trembled in the balance, I thank a merciful God that He has given
us the faith, the courage, and the power from which to mold
victory. We have known the bitterness of defeat and the exaltation
of triumph, and from both we have learned there can be no turning
back. We must go forward to preserve in peace what we won in war.

General Douglas MacArthur, commander of allied forces in the
Pacific, radio address on V-J Day, September 2, 1945, when Japanese
representatives signed the surrender agreement on the deck of the
battleship USS Missouri, in Tokyo Bay.

War Aims and the Diplomacy
of War

1943

America must choose one of three courses after this war: narrow
nationalism, which inevitably means the ultimate loss of our own
liberty; international imperialism, which means the sacrifice of
some other nation’s liberty; or the creation of a world in which
there shall be an equality of opportunity for every race and every
nation. I am convinced the American people will choose, by
overwhelming majority, the last of these courses. To make this
choice effective, we must win not only the war but also the peace,
and we must start winning it now.
To win this peace three things seem to me necessary — first, we
must plan now for peace on a worldwide basis; second, the world
must be free, politically and economically, for nations and for
men, that peace may exist in it; third, America must play an
active, constructive part in freeing it and keeping its
peace....
This cannot be accomplished by mere declarations of our leaders, as
in an Atlantic Charter. Its accomplishment depends primarily upon
acceptance by the peoples of the world.... The Four Freedoms will
not be accomplished by those momentarily in power. They will become
real only if the people of the world forge them into actuality.

Wendell Willkie, the 1940 Republican candidate for president,
in One World.

1943

Before this year is out, it will be made known to the world —
in actions rather than in words — that the Casablanca Conference
produced plenty of news; and it will be bad news for the Germans
and Italians — and the Japanese....
In an attempt to ward off the inevitable disaster, the Axis
propagandists are trying all of their old tricks in order to divide
the United Nations. They seek to create the idea that if we win
this war, Russia, England, China, and the United States, are going
to get into a cat-and-dog fight....
To these panicky attempts to escape the consequences to their
crimes we say — all the United Nations say — that the only terms on
which we shall deal with any Axis government or any Axis factions
are the terms proclaimed at Casablanca: ‘Unconditional Surrender.’
In our uncompromising policy we mean no harm to the common people
of the Axis nations. But we do mean to impose punishment and
retribution in full upon their guilty, barbaric leaders.

President Roosevelt, fireside chat after returning from the
Casablanca Conference with Prime Minister Churchill.

1943

Big Three[Quote?]

Term referring to the United States, United Kingdom (Great
Britain) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR/Soviet
Russia): the three main countries at war with Nazi Germany. They
held several “summit conferences” where their leaders (Roosevelt,
Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Premier Josef Stalin) met
together to plan wartime strategy.

1945

The establishment of order in Europe and the rebuilding of
national economic life must be achieved by processes which enable
the liberated peoples to destroy the last vestiges of Nazism and
Fascism and to create democratic institutions of their own
choice.

State Department report on the Yalta Conference, in which
the Big Three met in February 1945 at a resort in southern Russia,
to finalize plans to defeat Nazi Germany and to begin the
reconstruction of Europe.

The War at
Home

1941

[The attack on Pearl Harbor showed] the seriousness of the
challenge confronting us and our very souls became so inflamed with
righteous wrath, so fired with patriotism, that our differences and
divisions and hates melted into a unity never before witnessed in
this country.

Rep. John Flannagan of Virginia.

1942

Loose lips sink ships

Wartime slogan that urged people to keep quiet because
spies could always be listening.

1942

Manhattan Project[Quote?]

Secret code word for the immense scientific and engineering
project to build an atomic bomb before the Germans or
Japanese.

Eat less wheat, meat, sugar and fats to save for the army and
our allies

Text of a wartime conservation poster.

1942

The need is urgent — War in the Pacific has greatly reduced our
supply of vegetable fats from the Far East. It is necessary to find
substitutes for them. Fat makes glycerine. And glycerine makes
explosives for us and our Allies — explosives to down Axis planes,
stop their tanks, and sink their ships. We need millions of pounds
of glycerine and you housewives can supply it.
Don’t throw away a single drop of used cooking fat, meat drippings,
fry fats — every kind you use. After you’ve got all the cooking
good from them, pour them through a kitchen strainer into a clean,
wide-mouthed can. Keep it in a cool dark place....
Take them to your meat dealer when you’ve saved a pound or more. He
is cooperating patriotically. He will pay you for your waste fats
and get them started on their way to war industries.

Federal Government pamphlet getting civilians involved in the
war effort.

1943

Dr. New Deal... [has been replaced by] Dr. Win the War.... The
overwhelming first emphasis should be on winning the war.

President Roosevelt, on the change in the priorities of the
Federal Government.

1943

The honest-minded liberal will admit that the common man is
getting a better break [now] than he did under the New Deal.

A New Deal administrator.

1943

To harden home-front morale, the military services have adopted
a new policy of letting civilians see photographically what warfare
does to men who fight.

Newsweek magazine on the War Department’s policy of letting
photos of American troop casualties be shown in order to reverse
the public’s overconfidence.

Women in the
War

1942

Days and nights were an endless nightmare, until it seemed we
couldn’t stand it any longer. Patients came in by the hundreds, and
the doctors and nurses worked continuously under the tents amid the
flies and heat and dust. We had from eight to nine hundred victims
a day.

Eunice Hatchitt, Army nurse serving on Bataan in the
Philippines.

1943

To be doing something towards winning the war, to be making
some money, to learn a trade, men and women have been pouring into
the city [of Mobile, Alabama] for more than a year now.

Observation of novelist John Dos Passos.

1943

I was an eager learner, and I soon became an outstanding
riveter. At Rohr I worked riveting to boom doors on P-38s.... The
war really created opportunities for women. It was the first time
we got a chance to show that we could do a lot of things that only
men had done before.

Winona Espinosa, an aircraft worker.

1943

Something is happening that Adolf Hitler does not
understand..... It is the miracle of production.

Time magazine, on American industry’s production of immense
numbers of planes, ships, and tanks. Actually, German military
intelligence DID correctly estimate what the U.S. could
manufacture, but Hitler chose to ignore the report and declared war
on the U.S.

1943

Instead of cutting a cake, this woman is cutting a pattern of
aircraft parts. Instead of baking a cake, this woman is cooking
gears to reduce the tension in the gears after use.

Narrative in a news video showing women working in an
aircraft factory.

1944

There is nothing in the training to prepare you for the
excruciating noise you get down in the ship. Any who were not
heart-and-soul determined to stick it out would fade out right
away.... And it isn’t only your muscles that must harden. It’s your
nerve, too.

Woman shipyard worker.

1944

You had better be careful how you talk to me ‘cause I have
developed a big muscle in my right arm and a good strong one in my
left, so take it easy, kid.

Margaret Hooper, age 20, in a letter to a friend in the
Pacific Fleet. Margaret was working as an incoming materials
inspector at an aircraft plant in San Pedro, California.

1944

“Rosie the Riveter”

Name of the tough, patriotic, fictional woman cartoon
character made to rally women support and help during the
war.

1945

It gave me a good start in life. I decided that if I could
learn to weld like a man, I could do anything it took to make a
living.

Nova Lee Holbrook, on how her experience in war work was
invaluable.

The War at Home:
Japanese-Americans

1942

The very fact that no sabotage has taken place to date is a
disturbing and confirming indication that action will be taken.

War Department report on Japanese migrants and
Japanese-Americans on the West Coast after the attack on Pearl
Harbor.[citation needed]

1942

Despite the color of our hair and skin, despite the shape of
our eyes, the U.S. was our country. I remember how my parents
reminded us of that fact. Just before our family was evacuated, my
father... said, "No matter what happens, this is your home."

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, taken as a
child to an internment camp.[citation needed]

1942

During the bleak spring of 1942, the Japanese and
Japanese-Americans who lived on the West Coast of the United States
were taken into custody and removed into camps in the interior.
More than 100,000 men, women, and children were thus exiled and
imprisoned. More than two-thirds of them were American
citizens.

These people were taken into custody as a military measure on
the ground that espionage and sabotage were especially to be feared
from persons of Japanese blood. The whole group was removed from
the West Coast because the military authorities thought it would
take too long to conduct individual investigations on the spot.
They were arrested without warrants and were held without
indictment or a statement of charges.... Despite the good intention
of the chief relocation officers, the centers were little better
than concentration camps.

If the evacuees were found ‘loyal,’ they were released only if
they could find a job and a place to live, in a community where no
hoodlums would come out at night to chalk-up anti-Japanese slogans,
break windows, or threaten riot. If found ‘disloyal’ in their
attitude to the war, they were kept in the camps indefinitely —
although sympathy with the enemy is no crime in the United States
(for white people at least) so long as it is not translated into
deeds or the visible threat of deeds.

Eugene V. Rostow, in Harper’s, 1945[specific citation needed]

1942

There were no lights, stoves, or window panes.... We slept on
army cots with our clothes on. ... The barbed wire fence which
surrounded the camp was visible against the background of the
snow-covered Sierra mountain range.

Karl Yoneda on conditions at the internment camp for
Japanese migrants and Japanese-Americans at Manzanar,
California.[citation needed]

1944

After all those years, having worked his whole life to build a
dream — having it all taken away.... He died a broken man.

Peter Ota, whose family was interned at a camp in
Colorado.[citation needed]

1944

We must accord great respect and consideration to the judgments
of the military authorities who are on the scene and who have full
knowledge of the military facts.... At the same time, however, it
is essential that there be definite limits to military
discretion.... Individuals must not be left impoverished of their
constitutional rights on plea of military necessity that has
neither substance nor support.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Frank Murphy, one of three
justices dissenting in Korematsu v. United States. The
Court’s six-judge majority supported the interning of Japanese and
Japanese-Americans.

The War at Home:
African-Americans

1942

This is a war to keep men free. The struggle to broaden and
lengthen the road of freedom — our freedom — here in America — will
come later. That this private, intra-American war will be carried
on and won is the only real reason we Negroes have to fight. We
must keep the road open....
The very fact that I, a Negro, can fight against the evils in
America is worth fighting for. This open fighting against the
wrongs one hates is the mark and the hope of democratic freedom.

My own opinion was that blacks could best overcome racist
attitudes through their achievements, even though these had to take
place within the hateful environment of segregation....
The... war represented a golden opportunity....
We owned a fighter squadron — something that would have been
unthinkable only a short time earlier. It was all ours....
Furthermore, we would be required to analyze our own problems and
solve them with our own skills.

General Benjamin O. Davis, the first African American general
in the Air Force, and commanding officer of the Tuskegee Airmen
during World War II.[citation needed]